County Clerk Subpoenaed in Federal Criminal Probe of Trump

Milwaukee County Clerk George Christenson received a Grand Jury subpoena Friday as part of a criminal probe by the U.S. Department of Justice and the FBI into Donald Trump and his presidential campaign.

The subpoena is asking Christensen’s office to produce communications from the Trump campaign and, as Christensen put it, “the same old cast of characters” involved in the campaign’s effort to overturn the results of the election. it specifically names 19 people, including Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, Bill Stepien, Jim Troupis and L. Lin Wood.

The letter comes from the office of Special Counsel Jack Smith, recently appointed by U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland to lead already ongoing investigations into Trump and his campaign’s involvement in the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol and other efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

In the fallout of former president Trump’s loss in the 2020 election to President Joe Biden, his campaign and allies sought to use the courts to overturn the result of the election; contesting and sewing doubt about the results in a number of battleground states including Wisconsin.

Milwaukee County was a major target of this effort in Wisconsin, as the biggest stronghold for the Democratic Party in the state. Both the Trump campaign and state Republican politicians and allies targeted Milwaukee as part of an election probe sponsored by the state Legislature and in numerous lawsuits.

During a press conference Tuesday, Christensen said he doesn’t remember receiving any communications from high-profile individuals like Giuliani or Powell. One individual he does remember receiving communications from is Troupis, a Wisconsin attorney who was involved in an attempt to give former Vice President Mike Pence a fake slate of electors for Wisconsin.

But Christensen said his office would conduct a search for any records meeting the description in the subpoena, which asks that the documents be turned over no later than Friday, Dec. 9.

“As you all know we’ve been inundated with open records requests for years, taxing our system and taxing county clerks across our state,” Christensen said. “I don’t expect any new information to come out of this, quite honestly.”

The county clerk said he had not heard from the DOJ on this matter until the subpoena arrived and that it came across his desk Monday morning.

“There has been speculation as to whether they’re looking into the slate of false electors across the country; they’re looking of course into the recounts and all the lawsuits affecting the recounts, which all failed as we know, and also looking into the insurrection on Jan. 6,” Christensen said.